Hiring the right staff members is important to your team and to the development of the club. Your staff may not be found in the dugout on match day, but they will work with the players during the week or fulfill other key tasks for the club. They complement the head coach and for you as manager it is crucial to make sure you have the right people on the team.

You can hire one specialists of each type available for your club. Specialists have different effects based on their ability and salary.
They efficiently manage different team functions and, once hired, have a weekly salary, paid during the economicupdate.

Any staff member you hire must stay for at least one whole week before he can be let go. Firing a specialist will result in a cost. Also, whenever a staff member is fired, they are paid a week's wages as compensation. Beyond this there are no limitations as to how often you can make changes to your staff. The specialists you employ, as well as the hire/fire menu, can be found on the "The Club" page.

Specialist Categories

You can employ up to 5 staff members in total. You may employ up to 3 Assistant Coaches at a time. For all other staff categories your board will only allow one staff member at a time.

Any contribution you get from hiring a staff member is applied as a static bonus on top of an existing team stat. This bonus will always be visible to you. But since team stats are dynamic to begin with, and are influenced by different factors, the final effect achieved with a hired staff member can be hard to predict exactly. What you can be sure of is that you are moving the needle in the right direction. Staff members with higher skill levels naturally contribute a higher bonus effect. These bonuses are linear - which means that each additional skill level always contributes as much again as the skill level before.

The training speed bonus given by Assistant Coaches is added to your team's existing training efficiency. Make sure you have a good regular coach before considering spending much money on assistant coaches. But when you do have a competent head coach, hiring a number of skilled Assistant Coaches could be a good strategy for any team focused on training.

Skill Level

Training Speed

Injury Risk

Cost/week

0

No bonus

40%

0 €

1

+3.2%

+2.5%

1 500 €

2

+6.4%

+5%

3 000 €

3

+9.6%

+7.5%

6 000 €

4

+12.8%

+10%

12 000 €

5

+16%

+12.5%

24 000 €

This bonus is added as a multiplier on top of the existing training efficiency as decided by the coaching skill of your head coach, your chosen training intensity, and your chosen stamina share. As an example, if you had a solid coach, 100 % training intensity, and 10 % stamina share, the following training speeds would be achieved for a 22 year old formidable playmaker:

No assistant coach: 7 weeks until next level

Level 5 skill coach: 6 weeks until next level

Level 10 skill coach: 5 weeks until next level

Level 15 skill coach: 4 weeks until next level

You can hire up to three Assistant Coaches at a time. If you have several Assistant Coaches, their combined skill levels will create one single bonus. If you have several Assistant Coach, their bonuses are combined and applied only once. This means a level 4 Assistant Coach contributes exactly the same as two level 2 Assistant Coaches would. To make things easier, you will always see the actual bonus given by your current backroom staff or any staff you plan to hire written out on the Staff page.

Alongside the effects on training, Assistant Coaches also have two side effects. Form is increased, but so is injury risk.

Injury risk is calculated as the average number of injuries per game, not per player but per team. The base value is 0.4 injuries per match for your team. With a level 5 Medic this can be reduced to 0.025. Assistant Coaches contribute to a higher injury risk by 0.025 injuries per match per skill level hired. This means a level 5 Assistant Coach increases your base injury risk to 0.525 injuries per match (0.15 with a level 5 Medic), and three level 5 Assistant Coaches gives you a base injury risk of 0.775 injuries per match (0.4 with a Level 5 Medic).

As already mentioned, on the positive side Assistant Coaches do increase the background form of your players. If you have a full 15 skill levels of Assistant Coaches, background form will increase by 0.5 levels. In other words, three level 5 Assistant Coaches contribute half as much to form as a level 5 Form Coach would.

Comparison with old system

In the old system, Assistant Coaches could add between 18 % (for a single coach) and 30 % (for 10 coaches) to the training speed that you already got from your head coach. In the new system, with no Assistant Coaches, you will still train 9 % faster than you would have with no extra help in the old system. An extra 2 % is then added per extra skill level hired. To reach the same training speed as with 10 assistant coaches in the old system, about 10 skill levels are needed in total. With 15 skill levels, you can reach 39 % faster training than with no extra help in the old system.

Medics are responsible for the overall physical condition of your players. This means they work both proactively to prevent injuries as well as with the rehabilitation of any players that do get injured.

Skill Level

Recovery Speed

Injury Risk

Cost/week

0

No bonus

40%

0 €

1

+20%

-7.5%

1 500 €

2

+40%

-15%

3 000 €

3

+60%

-22.5%

6 000 €

4

+80%

-30%

12 000 €

5

+100%

-37.5%

24 000 €

Every time your team plays a match, there is a certain injury risk for your players. Having a Medic in the backroom staff will reduce the base injury risk for your team. A level 5 Medic will reduce the base injury risk from 0.4 injuries per match to 0.025, but be aware that other factors - such as hiring Assistant Coaches - may increase the risk.

If a player experiences an injury, Medics also help speed up their recovery. In Hattrick, injuries show up with an estimated recovery time in weeks. During every daily update, the player recovers a little bit on his way to 90 % health (when he can play again, but is still bruised) and then, ultimately, to 100 % health, when he has no sign of the injury left.

Hiring a spokesperson will improve the team's popularity with fans as well as sponsors, which in turn has an effect on sponsor income and ticket sales. Hiring a spokesperson is mainly a financial decision - make sure that the salary is covered by increased revenue for the club.

Skill Level

Fan mood

Sponsors

Cost/week

0

No bonus

No bonus

0 €

1

+0.1

+0.5

1 500 €

2

+0.2

+1

3 000 €

3

+0.3

+1.5

6 000 €

4

+0.4

+2

12 000 €

5

+0.5

+2.5

24 000 €

The Spokesperson gives a bonus to both fan and sponsor mood. The bonus is not immediate, but rather raises the target value towards which fan and sponsor mood move. After changing to a Spokesperson of a different level, it should take up to 8 weeks for the change to fully take effect.

The bonus per level is +0.1 for fan mood and +0.5 for sponsor mood. This means a level 5 Spokesperson will, over time, increase your fan mood by half a step and sponsor mood by two and a half steps.

A Spokesperson will always have a positive impact on your income. Higher fan mood will increase ticket sales and higher sponsor mood will increase sponsorship payments. The bigger effect tends to come through ticket sales, but this can vary a lot since many other factors impact fan mood and ticket sales. The bonus to sponsor income is more reliable.

The mental game is almost as important as the physical one. Hiring a Sports Psychologist can really help you create a winning atmosphere. This staff member will help you maintain your team's confidence in their own game as well as help nurture the team spirit of the whole squad.

Skill Level

Team spirit

Confidence

Cost/week

0

No bonus

No bonus

0 €

1

+0.1

+0.2

1 500 €

2

+0.2

+0.4

3 000 €

3

+0.3

+0.6

6 000 €

4

+0.4

+0.8

12 000 €

5

+0.5

+1

24 000 €

Team spirit is driven by the team attitude you set for previous games. Immediately after a game team spirit may get a boost or drop lower, depending on which team attitude was used. But at each daily update the team spirit then tends to normalise, which means if it is high then it will slowly drop and if it is low then it will slowly recover. A Sports Psychologist can help you improve this process by raising the base value toward which your team spirit moves naturally. A higher base value means that high team spirit values will fall slower and low ones will rise faster. The bonus received is one tenth of a level per skill level employed. This means a level 5 Sports Psychologist will increase your team spirit base value by half a level of team spirit.

Your team's confidence is also helped by the Sports Psychologist. Confidence is primarily driven by your team results and how many goals you've scored. But the Sports Psychologist adds a bonus to confidence as well. This bonus equals one full level of confidence for a Level 5 Sports Psychologist, or one fifth of a level of confidence per skill level employed.

Contrary to popular belief, if your team gains very high levels of confidence, psychologists DO NOT lower team confidence towards the optimum level. Your players will remain overconfident.

Player performance is not only down to technical skills and physical stamina. Players tend to go in and out of form, and many factors can influence this, not least mental ones.

The Form Coach specialises in getting the most out of the player material you have. Hiring a form coach is not a quick fix, neither is the effect permanent - but for some teams and some situations it can be a good solution.

Skill Level

Form

Cost/week

0

No bonus

0 €

1

+0.2

1 500 €

2

+0.4

3 000 €

3

+0.6

6 000 €

4

+0.8

12 000 €

5

+1.0

24 000 €

The form of a player is a measure of how close he is to be performing at his maximum potential. The value you see on the player is the current form, and this is what is used in the match simulation. However, the current form always has a trend and the value the form is moving toward is called the background form. By using a Form Coach you will receive a bonus to your background form updates. Whenever background form is recalculated (this happens on average every second week) each skill level of the Form Coach will bump the background form higher by 0.2 levels. This means a level 5 Form Coach will add a whole level of background form to your player when the update is applied. Please note that background form can still drop, but that your average over time will be higher.

Increases the amount of funds a Club can keep in cash, before the Board intervenes.

Increases also the speed with which the Board will release money to the manager when cash runs below the cash reserve limit established by the Board.

The Financial Director increases the Club’s economic flexibility and is especially useful for Clubs that have a strong financial position. Normally, the Board sets a limit to how much money is at the managers direct disposal for things such as salaries, player transfer fees, or arena projects. The rest of the cash will be held by the Board and will only be released by the Board when the Board deems it necessary.

The Financial Director will grant the manager the possibility to invest saved funds into the squad more aggressively than the Board would otherwise have agreed to. Having a Financial Director on the team may be necessary for teams that save up for a few seasons to make an expensive run for the Cup or league title.

Historical Development

Accountants: Allowed you to earn interest on your money if you had a large surplus (over €4 million) in the bank and reduced debts if you were far into the red.

Until season 42 you could have up to 244 staff member of each of the 7 types, with negative consequences for every member above 10. Before season 43, Accountant were removed and Goalkeeping Coaches merged with Assistant Coaches.
After season 43 is introduced a limit of 10 specialists of each type and of 30 staff member for all, with still an effects of each additional specialist slightly lower than the effects of the one before him. Last reform was implemented in season 55, reintroducing the Financial Director from Accountants and renaming Doctor to Medic and Physiotherapist to Form Coach.

Comparison with the old staff system

The old staff system affected similar areas of the game as this new system does, but it was designed in such a way that there was rarely any incentive for users to change the composition of their staff or for different clubs to choose different strategies. Most users would choose one optimal configuration of their staff and leave it unchanged for years.

In the new system we wanted to introduce meaningful choices. You need to decide on a focus for your new staff team, since it is no longer possible to hire every category of staff. Cost has also become a more important factor since picking the highest skilled staff member every time will become very expensive indeed - it is more likely that the best choice for your team will be a combination of higher and lower skilled staff members.

There are a few important things to note as we switch to the new staff system:

Find your focus

The old system was easy to optimise, and most users that had any knowledge about the game would choose a similar setup and then practically never change it. The new system should reward more active choices by making the optimal choice differ more between clubs.

There is now a total limit of 5 staff members that can be employed at any given time. This means you can't hire staff from every available category, but will need to choose a focus for your team. The advantage of the new staff system is that more powerful combinations are now possible.

Staff levels and salaries

Staff members are no longer anonymous units to add or dispose of at will. They have names, they have individual skill levels (between 1 and 5), and they have at least a semblance of labour rights. They are also able to do more for your team than ever before.

In the old system, each extra staff member was paid the same as the one before, but the more you hired in a certain category the less each additional one would contribute. Many times, the first staff member hired would alone contribute as much as the next 7 or 8 combined.

In the new system, the effects of a new staff member are clearly described and each additional skill level will contribute as much as the one before. The twist is that instead the salary rises, so this now becomes the factor to watch out for. You can progress faster - but will it be worth it?

A level 5 staff member will have 5 times the effect of a level 1 staff member, which is great, but he will at the same time be 16 times as expensive. Lower skilled staff are definitely more cost-effective, but hiring the best can still pay off. Finding a balance for your team becomes an important consideration.

New range of modifiers

The new staff system does not replace the old one from the same starting point. Even with no staff in a certain category, your team will do better now than it did in the old system when no staff were hired in that same category. For example, your injury risk will be lower today with no Medic than it was without any Physios in the old system. This "free" effect varies a litte between categories, but is typically just short of the effect you would get from the first staff member in any category. Another way to approach this change is to say that it is now more about choosing an edge for your team and less about covering the necessary bases. The floor has been raised, and so has the roof - for those areas that you do choose to focus on, higher overall modifiers are possible in the new system than in the old. A consequence of this is also that the bonuses achieved by teams may differ more as well.